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Is your website really accessible?

You may have heard the term accessibility being thrown around quite a bit these days. While the term accessibility is often referred to when providing access to disabled users it also covers users with different browsers, devices and operating systems.

So how do I ensure my site is accessible?

While Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. applies to federal agencies, it's a good policy for all to follow, especially businesses that are business to consumer (B to C). Section 508 sets forth a series of standards for your web developer to follow to ensure the content of your site is accessible to text-to-speech readers and all text can be easily viewed at a larger size for the partially impaired.

Your website should be accessible by all major browsers including older versions of that browser. It's not realistic to test in every browser in existence. As of writing, you website should work in all version of Internet Explorer that haven't been issued an end of life, FireFox, Chrome and Safari.

Your site should be accessible or provide alternate access to a number of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Your developer can use a technique known as responsive design to help minimize your content to fit specific devices. Occasionally when the design is more complex and harder to minimize developers provide alternate layouts to users with mobile devices. It's not realistic to test in every phone in existence so make sure your developer tests on all major smartphones and tablets.